An attorney representing one of the Michigan Republicans charged in the fake elector scheme lashed out at the co-defendants in that case who are blaming Donald Trump for their actions.
Prosecutors charged 16 GOP activists in the state with eight counts of forgery and conspiracy related to their post-election activities in 2020, and some of them have claimed the Trump campaign was involved — which defense attorney Kevin Kijewski cautioned against in a newly unearthed audio recording shared with The Daily Beast.
“I don’t want to call people out by name, but certain de-facto co-defendants, these other people who were charged along with Cliff. There’s a handful of them, where I’m like, what the hell are you doing?” Kijewski said at a fundraiser in September for his client Clifford Frost, hosted at the Macomb County Republican Party offices.
“They’re saying (they’ve said this in court documents and other interviews), 'We were acting at the direction of the president and his lawyers,’” Kijewski added. “What the hell are you talking about? Really? You got evidence to back that up? Boy, that’s a really stupid thing to say if you don’t. Guess what, they don’t, and if they do, they’ve got something that a whole bunch of other people don’t have.”
ALSO READ: A convicted January 6 attacker faces prison. So he went to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump first.
Co-defendant Meeshawn Maddock, the former chair of the Michigan GOP, has previously boasted of close ties to Trump's orbit, while co-defendant Amy Facchinello's defense attorneys made court filings in September claiming she and the others were taking orders from Trump. Three sources have claimed that Rudy Giuliani was behind the effort to send alternate, pro-Trump electors from seven states he had lost to Joe Biden.
“Those people that have made that assertion, they might have something to worry about from the federal government, and they're really making it really difficult for everyone else,” Kijewski said at the fundraiser.
"For the most part, they had nothing to do with that. So I don't like people when they bring up the president or the president's lawyers or any of this other stuff, because what they're inevitably going to do, that's like a gift to [Michigan Attorney General] Dana Nessel to try to get those people in.
“I wish they would shut up," he added. "That's what I wish they would do.”
